


nefarium

by awkwardeye



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, F/M, Infidelity, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-12 14:52:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7110016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardeye/pseuds/awkwardeye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi's popular new novel details the affair of a married man with a young woman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nefarium

_Regarding her as a work of art with her teeth bared through the agony of contact and elegiac eyes suggesting a longer than written past, tides of praise leave him awash in vanity for, if she is truly art and he the painter, he falls not short of the title of God. In a weak attempt to quiet her cries in the still of night, he places two fingers to his lips and kisses their tips softly, as one might a virgin lover. Fluid in his movements, he brings his fingers up to the plump, torn lips of his creation, the sublime creature she is, and feels her blood cascade over his skin when she spits upon him, eyes gleaming with vengeance._

Levi is three years out of his prime at 36, previously a lonely shell of a man lacking any conceivable reason to suffer. He lives with his beautiful wife and spends most of his time doing what he desires. Doused in cynicism, he lives his life questioning his life, but not its purpose because he knows with great conviction that he is no more than an aimless feather carried on the wind. And his heart no longer aches with the sight of his wife, previously beloved; she does not inspire the words that tumble from his mind so laced with the poison that is his affection.

The night is old and she is young, leaning over the railing, bringing her cigarette to her painted lips and expelling smoke from her lungs in the next breath. Harsh winds toss her hair into the night, midnight strands fading into a new day. Broken glass litters the balcony, crunches beneath her heels when she shifts her weight from foot to foot. Shivering, she hears him speak, but isn’t listening to the meaning so much as the sound and it sounds wonderful, terrible. His voice reminds her of her first sip of alcohol, the harsh burn the price of the smooth mellowness of a head void of clear thought. She hesitates to welcome his affection when he offers it, hand out and lips pressed fleetingly to hers. Her heart races in her chest, irritating her beyond words as she twists out of his hold.

“Don’t be like that,” Levi snaps, grabbing her wrist and drawing her to him.

“I can’t believe this.” Mikasa shakes her head. Glaring at Levi, she clenches her jaw so tightly it’s a wonder her teeth don’t shatter. Lips bitten by habit pull back into a sneer. A million thoughts race through her head, on her tongue falling dead. She can’t find the words, though they’re all there in her mind, clinging to a train of thought that hurtles on aimlessly and wildly.

“Believe what, that I wrote a book about you? Most women would _thank_ me.” He drops her wrist and kicks at the glass underfoot. “But you’re not a fucking woman; you’re just a little girl who gets scared the second something bad happens. I’m the one whose marriage is on the line, not you, sweetheart,” Levi says. Fatigue weighs on his eyelids and he decides to return to the softer route filled with kind words and whispered memories. “I’ll take you to Paris. No one’ll bother you there.” (Not that anyone is bothering Mikasa here.) “Just me and you, we’ll do whatever you want.” He knows she’s broken when his fingertips brush her neck and she makes no move to resist his advance.

Mikasa is too young, too beautiful, too trusting when it comes to himself, Levi thinks. This beautiful girl that the world knows and, yet, does not know plagues his thoughts, this representation of everything wrong with the world he inhabits. The poster child of self-indulgence and narcissism draws him to her when he wants nothing more than to toss her away. He can’t turn around without seeing her, can’t close his eyes without dreaming of her, can’t exhale without having first breathed her in like cool air on a winter’s evening. Full of life and promise, she hopes needlessly for a rose-colored tomorrow, dreams ceaselessly, loves with both too much and too little fear. In bound pages, he’s shattered that hope, her.

When his lips descend upon hers, she feels herself seep away. Her skin burns where his lips land, but she feels frozen to the bone, like herself carved in ice. She blinks away the tears that threaten, blurring her vision and making her eyelashes stick together. In the end, they always return to this; succumbing to each other, to need, they neither forgive nor forget, but move on. They’re always moving on. As much as she hates to admit it, she can’t leave him. She’s in too deep, too invested in his game, and, perhaps, she doesn’t want to leave. He’s taken her world and transformed it into something vibrant amidst the banal haze of monotony, risking his own world at the hand of infatuation mixed in with young flesh. When she falls upon Levi, she tumbles into his arms with the knowledge that he’ll catch her.

Sex, previously an uncomfortable and tedious affair, burns Mikasa alive with Levi. Even at their worst, they’re better than mediocre. No longer a hobbling shuffle and stumble, it resembles a well-choreographed dance by his knowing hands. He hardly lets her see him when he’s upon her, though, covering her eyes. The fabric is a deep shade of purple that she feels permeate her sight, her skull, down to her thoughts, and it swallows her vision whole. Relinquishing control entirely, her limbs never protest when her wrists are bound nearly too tight, always nearly too tight. He’s angrier this time, rough in every movement, harsher in his degradations, crueler where he’s usually kind. She takes it all the same, accepts everything he gives her until her throat is raw and stinging and she can no longer cry out in pleasure or pain. When he rips the fabric from her face, their eyes meet in an electric exchange. They’re moving on again, never settling, never forgetting, never forgiving.

_And yet I do not weep and mourn the murder of marriage’s promise, but I weep at the possibility and inevitability of the imminent close of the war and cease of bloodshed for it should mean the close of her!_

Levi always says that he writes only from experience. In fiction, he weaves reality. From reality, he births fiction. It’s for this reason that Petra frets, because she knows that his novel is his confession. He’s honest; she knows he’ll answer if she asks, but the notion terrifies her. She doesn’t want to know what she fears. Like a scared child, she’d rather call her parents to check for monsters than check for herself.

Petra Ral is the ultimate wife, or so she brands herself. When she loves, she loves entirely, and she’s only loved once and still loves Levi. Even in midst of yellow headlines about infidelity she loves him with a heart so pure and willing to love someone who tosses her heart from her chest with every lie (and all he speaks is lies) it hurts him. She refuses to let go and let him leave because she can’t, she doesn’t know how to.

“What is it? Who is it?” Petra stands close to Hange, wringing her hands and leaning forward to hear what snatches of conversation present themselves. From the phone, she hears the silhouette of a voice. Is that _her_ voice, his lover, his mistress, his whore? Is that the voice of the woman who inspired a novel and the crumbling of an eternal promise? Pretty, soft with an edge, the kind of voice made for eroticism. Petra hears the woman laugh at something Hange says -an apology on Levi’s part- this breathy sigh that shoves a knife of insecurity through her chest.

Hange is silent when the conversation ends. Slowly, she returns Levi’s phone to Petra and shakes her head. “Snooping around like this…” Her voice fades to nothing. She’d rather not be brought into this, but here she is, calling women because poor Petra is too afraid. As she feels pity seep into her, a sharp tug of anger pulls her back into the realm of reality. “I can’t believe either of you! He’s a lying cheater, you’re a sneak and dragging me into this!” She catches herself before she can go on and shakes her head.

“I know,” Petra sobs. “I _know_ , Hange, and you know I don’t do things like this. His book has driven me insane; I don’t even know why I’m doing this… Have you read it? Have you read how he describes her? Sublime, he called her, like she’s some kind of angel or something. He’s never written anything about me, never held me like he holds the woman he writes about. Goddammit, he _married_ me, but he loves her!”

There was a time, though, when Petra and Levi were very near mutual love. When they were young with heads full of hopes for their futures and her father and Levi could hold a civil conversation for more than a few minutes. They spent nights awake talking, making love, promising the world to each other. They were going to have a family together, he would write himself to fame and she would do the same. She was sure a long time ago that they fit together, were meant to be and nothing could change that. All things must change; that’s how time works.

Petra has known for much longer than she cares to admit. His affair wasn’t discovered standing in the kitchen with her husband’s friend or with the release of a bestseller and media speculation, but with a credit card bill. He was buying her things he would never buy for Petra. When the bills didn’t prove much, it was the scent of another woman’s perfume, the expensive kind that one smells on women in wealthy settings. She replaced the mattress, but she knew it didn’t stop anything when she found an earring in the new bed. Levi had been trying to force the words into her ears for a while, too, but she spoke over him and his truth because she was afraid of what it might mean. And she knew there were others before the one he fell in love with, but she blamed them on his vice, a conjured addiction.

“This will all blow over,” Hange says.

“Yes, and then what?” _I divorce him or he leaves me for another woman. He’ll be fine and I’ll be broken, alone_ , Petra thinks. So this is life after a mistress, constant fear and distrust. She doesn’t know how she’ll ever recover or if she’ll the ever recover. Her stomach drops at the thought.

 

_She is too young to fear death. Brimming with youth, she makes love to mortality, presses nicotine kisses to her love’s chapped lips. If Death is a young man and she his lover, they’re unsatisfied in love and lust and she wants more, so much more than he can give. Death runs its rosy fingers over her white body as she swallows it with tendrils of smoke that caress her throat, tear it to pieces. Though she cherishes her every breath, she wastes every third. She welcomes death as a wanton whore welcomes finely dressed customers._

“It’s a goddamn bestseller and he’s told everything except her name. This will go down in history, the novel that made the nation question the basis of extramarital affairs. He has written another star-crossed lovers story, but it makes the reader question the stars rather than the love. This is Romeo leaving Juliet for Rosaline –no, not even Rosaline– an entirely new woman and her name is MKA!”

Erwin turns off the television with a sigh. “I swear, that damn book of yours is all they ever talk about.” Glancing toward Levi, he straightens in his seat and ponders. He’s known Levi for a long time now, a couple handfuls of years peppered by spats that turned into wars and split the time into sections of knowing and being acquainted with. Fall apart, come together. That’s how all of Levi’s relationships are because he’s a both loyal and free thing, as caged as he paints himself. Even after all of these years of knowing and being acquainted, there are aspects of Levi Erwin has yet to uncover.

The affair wasn’t a shock, but it wasn’t _not_ a shock for Erwin. The surprise, the true portion of it that stirred Erwin, resided in two notions proven fact. The first being that no one knew of it, but everyone knew. The second, he wrote about it and had the heart to sell it, his book of sin. It was the equivalent of publishing a book of confessions instead of going to church to ask for forgiveness. Levi was downright boasting. Or so Erwin thought. At the same time, it wasn’t a surprise for the simple fact of Levi’s nature in comparison to Petra’s. If Levi was a cup and love was water, he couldn’t hold it for more than a second without spilling it.

“I want to make sure I’ve got all the details right. Help me out, Levi; I have some holes.”

Levi smirked and shook his head, raising his hand in objection. “You know, it’s all in the book, Erwin. Ri-.”

“Rien de plus, rien de moins. Nothing more, nothing less. I know you, Levi, and I know you would never put it all in a book, not for the public to see. You have a diary hidden somewhere with the rest of the story, but it’s not all in your book,” Erwin says. He knows Levi to have always been particularly tight lipped regarding his personal affairs. The novel is a contradiction to the doctrine Levi seemed to live by in the past, a stain on the carpet.

“Humor me, Erwin, with the details you have.” Levi leans back in his chair, meeting Erwin’s gaze evenly.

“Alright. Her name is Mikasa Ackerman. Her parents were killed a few years back in an attempted robbery and she was adopted by friends of the family. Her face is in every magazine because she’s a model – that’s how I knew who she was; you’ve a talent for describing eyes- and pretty popular. You either met in a diner or something of the sort or in rehab. I’m thinking rehab because the word is that she’s got a taste for powders, you know what I mean, and Petra thinks you’re a sex addict. You aren’t, but it gives you a reason to be an infidel.”

“ _Infidel_? You sound ancient.”

“I _am_ ancient, Levi. What I want to know is whether or not I’m right.”

“Yeah, you’re right. We met in a support group, though,” Levi replies. He makes no move to explain that Mikasa practically molded herself to him when they met, pleased to see a seemingly normal face belonging to a tortured soul. She was pretty, burned out as she was, with wiry hair and empty eyes.

“She had a boyfriend, though. You said so in your novel. Unsatisfied, she entered a sexual relationship with you and you fell in love with her because she was everything Petra was not, everything you usually hate, right? Even now you hate her, but you love her enough to want to be with her or you wouldn’t be waiting for a divorce; you’d be trying to fix your marriage, but you’re not.”

Mikasa wasn’t seeing anyone per se when she and Levi began their relationship. What she was doing was more or less playing around until something better walked into the picture. Levi doesn’t know the boy’s name or anything much about him other than she was sleeping with his friend more often than she was sleeping with him. For all Levi knows, he might have spoken to the guy without ever knowing it, looked him in the eye without knowing what they shared. It’s probably for the best. Mikasa was bored in the relationship, evident by her endeavors with her lover’s friend, and having Levi to compare him to only made him more of a drag, this tedious chore of a lover. Levi remembers one conversation they had about him.

Sitting in a hotel room, words had escaped them. They had nothing to say to each other, which wasn’t unusual. Quiet souls, conversation presented itself as more of an obstacle than something to be enjoyed. A couple on one side argued, their voices pervading the silence. A couple on the other side multi-tasked: argued while fucking. The room smelled old, stale, like it was filled with a ghost’s sweat or tears. The mattress protested with the creak of springs whenever they shifted.

Mikasa stared at the notches left from the slamming bedpost for a while before she spoke, catching Levi by surprise. “I told my boyfriend-he’s not really-… I told him about you. Sort of. We were making out and about to fuck and I asked him why he’s always so gentle, so plain, and boring. I asked him if he would ever hurt me, choke me or something like you do. Call me a slut and fuck me like he hates me. It’s sweet, what he said, but so boring. ‘I love you. Why would I ever want to hurt you?’ And I said I’ve been seeing another guy for a while, asked him how that made him feel. He was quiet for a little bit and then he looked angry and sad so I said I was joking. I don’t love him. I don’t think I love you, though. Do you think I’m a bad person?” She met Levi’s eyes with her question.

“Why are you asking me?” he muttered.

“I know I am. I just want to know if you think so.” She lit a cigarette and left after that. She never mentioned her boyfriend again, but Levi figured she broke up with him because she seemed a lot happier whenever they met following her confession.

Levi was jealous of Mikasa. It was the kind of jealousy that consumes all thought. She was free to leave at any given moment, him or her boyfriend, while he knew, though he never acknowledged it, that he was tied to her by a few emotions he took care to tuck away and shackled to his wife by the wedding band on his finger. By then, he’d begun writing, too, and, like a hopeless romantic, viewed her through rose tinted glasses as his personal muse.

“To put it simply, she’s human. She understands me and I understand her. I loved Petra, quite a bit and for quite a while, but some relationships have their expiration dates and I’m too old to try to hold water.” Levi glances at the clock on the wall. “It sounds strange, but I’m glad I’ll most likely die before her. It means I’ll never live a day without her.”

_It comes in waves, washing her in the simmering glow of it. She hardly comprehends it, prefers not to in her best moments. But each wave crashes harder upon her, leaving her a weeping, bruised shore, until her knees buckle beneath the weight of it all and her breath breaks from her in sharp gasps and sighs. Where it’s closest to her, the water is green, pale, and translucent, like perfume in an emerald glass bottle, the color of envy paled by blindingly white insecurity and instability. Farthest from her, it disappears in a swipe of deep blue blending into indigo where its depth overcomes her and his warmth resides in hallowed black depths. When the wave rolls in, it rolls in indigo and burning with him._

Mikasa is 21 and she clings. She clings to her adopted brother, the only piece of a fragmented family that remains like he’s her last breath and the tides have risen above her head. She clings to Levi, this striking shade, this vivid hue burning her through with silver eyes that know and love her without any hesitation.

Blue shadows waltz across his back over the marks her nails leave. Their pale bodies wrap around each other, the white petals of flowers tossed together by the wind. Choked sighs and low groans fill the room. As their climaxes rush forward and they’re overcome with pleasure, the world feels horribly wrong and off kilter.

Levi clings now to Mikasa. Her breath warms his shoulder where her lips press against his hot skin. He embraces her with all of the strength her has, pulling her too him until they are chest to chest and she can’t leave him, not like this. Sinking, sinking, sinking, he feels his stomach plunge through the floor and wonders if he’ll ever find it again. Tears wet his face and she kisses them away until they no longer spill over his eyelids. His heart swells in his chest, making it feel cramped. Is he still alive, still breathing? He must be because he feels her beneath his fingertips. Solid, warm, she’s right there and he feels himself against her.

They haven’t slept or spoken except to whisper each other’s names in too many hours too count. Sometimes she cries. Sometimes he cries. They fall upon each other, giving warmth and comfort until they freeze in an effort to warm the other. Like they’re young and in love, but they’re not young and love seems too good to be true. Thoughts evade them, somewhere in their heads, but never falling to the surfaces of their minds.

She has dreams that she’s allowed to have, dreams she can’t live out in one city no matter how grand it is. With a heavy heart, she spends her last days with him in her cramped apartment and they pretend the world only spins for them and the sun revolves around them, these infinitesimal pieces in the sprawling expanse of the universe. It hits hard. The wave crashes upon, the final one, and pulls her from the shore and into his arm. Mikasa inhales Levi’s scent, a mixture of the sweat he’s been marinating in for a few hours and his cologne, a clean and strong scent that reminds her of leather, whiskey, and ties, and the lingering scent of soap on his skin from his last shower. He no longer smells faintly of Petra’s perfume, but of her own instead. His hand is bare, but hers is weighed down by diamonds.

He runs his fingers through her hair and promises her the world as long as she promises to return. The lines that mark his face are more pronounced now, his outer shell broken in front of her alone. Levi smiles, this wistful twist of his mouth, and squeezes her shaking form. If there was ever a moment to feel imbalanced on the tipping scales of insecurity and security it is now when he holds her and lets go of her in one moment. He knows better than anyone (except maybe her) that falling in and out of love is easy, too damn easy, and both can happen in one moment or series of moments with someone least expected. Levi never expected to fall in love with a girl over a decade his junior who spoke of drugs as if they were better lovers than humans and he knows she never expected to fall in love with a married man whose affection had to be dragged from him.

“Why do you love me, Mikasa?”

“You wrote an entire book about it.”

“I want to hear you say it before you go.”

“I love you for the same reason seasons come and go, time seems to quicken and slow, and that’s for no reason at all. I love you because that’s who I am and that’s who I’ll always be.”

_If love is a sea, it swallows them without hesitation._


End file.
